Whatever it is, it's easily six times the size of the largest I've seen so far.

Thankfully, I had the boys in manufacturing rig up an air-to-air variant of my laser tech for the interceptors. I've never done that in a campaign before, but having a UFO slip by an under-equipped raven and shoot down one of my satellites would be utterly catastrophic at this point in the game. I decided not to risk it.

Plasma tech is like five days from completion, too, so... actually pretty glad this purchase was somewhat justified.

UFO scores a hit as the raven moves in close. Laser cannon has shit range.

PEW PEW PEW

PEW PEW PEW

Fires fast and frequent, scoring about two hits for every miss.

Return fire from the UFO is dead on, dropping me to half health.

come on you fat fuck

DOWN

Raven survives with a fraction of a pixel of health, with less than a second of fuel remaining.

Earlier this month I splurged on a Foundry, which lets me upgrade shit like grenade damage and scope accuracy, as well as buy abilities like "shaped armor," allowing Niku to absorb more damage.

One of them, Tactical Rigging, costs a whopping 300 double dollars, but lets everyone use two items instead of one. It's amazing. All of China's funding went to the sole tactical discovery that if we attached scopes onto our guns AND put on our kevlar, we were a noticably more effective team. Good job, everyone.

Everyone gets a scope (+10% aim) and a nano-fiber vest (+2 hp). Eventually, if I can stockpile enough chryssalid corpses, I can make a straight upgrade of the nanofiber vest out of their chitin plating (+4 hp, -50% melee damage).

Crash site is in China.

Dead of night.

Looove how they did these crash sites. Scorch marks, little fires scattered about, holes in the hull. Looks awesome.

I move Grath up to the yawning opening just ahead.

He doesn't see anything at the front of the bay. I grapple him onto the roof.

Defenstration follows.

Grath moves onto the roof to check for floaters.

Clear.

Both move into position to drop down and double team whatever horrible nightmare is likely waiting for us in there.

To the right of the opening, Büge checks for ET's.

Nothin'.

Back on the left side, Niku and Beaver set up beside the doorway.

Everyone's in position.

Let's do this.

Beaver breaches the doorway, revealing everything.

Cyberdisc.

20 fucking hp, with a one-shot kill weapon. It's also surrounded by two drones that can heal Mother Disc each turn for 5.

Oh but that's not all.

A sectoid and A SECTOID PILOTING AN ALIEN MECH

Two mutons, each 10 hp each, armed with plasma rifles that can kill our guys in one hit.

That red thing? That's a Beserker. It's melee-only, can kill anything in one hit, and can travel as far as a chryssalid.

It's bad news.

Every goddamn one of them goes into overwatch.

Beaver is fucked.

I briefly consider some insane all-out attack with everyone I have, but there's just no way. I need to retreat.

Beaver bolts.

Everyone fires.

The cyberdisc hits for 9 (there on the right).

The mechtoid misses by a hair...

...taking out the wall just behind her.

Somehow, Beaver squeaks by with 1 health.

Niku, meanwhile, angles herself to make use of her newest gadget (I finally got enough Meld to upgrade her mechsuit to mid-tier).

GRENADE LAUNCHER

We're still waiting on the Foundry to be done with that grenade upgrade, so this hits for 4, instead of 5.

Not enough to take out the drones, which is a bummer, but at least the cyberdisc is down to 75%.

Meanwhile, out front, Beat Bandita moves in on the right.

50%'s the best we're gonna get, apparently.

HITS

Muton down to half.

Mutons have this reaction ability that triggers every now and then where they bark and beat their chest to intimidate their attacker.

Apparently it works, because Beat panics, hunkering down in place.

I drop Grath down from the roof to take up position on the left side of the room.

50%.

Hits!

Buuut not enough for a kill. These light rifles suck plasma balls.

Defenestration drops in for the killshot.

No luck, at this range.

Büge, on the other hand, has a halfway decent angle from her spot on the right doorway, opposite Niku and Beaver.

Scores a hit.

Glorious.

Alien turn.

Out of the dark, a mechtoid barrels in just below Büge!

Nowhere near enough time to turn and run.

Inside, the cyberdisc unfolds.

Takes aim.

And MISSES HOLY SHIT

The drones start repairing the damage we did.

Putting it back to full health by the time both are through.

The mechtoid turns toward Defenestration.

Fires.

R.I.P.

Our turn.

Beaver takes aim with her rocket.

At the bottom of the ramp, the hidden Berserker takes 6 damage, beating his chest in rage.

Berserkers have this always-on ability where they'll run up to whoever deals damage to them. Sometimes you can use this to lure them into traps.

He turns and, weirdly, runs away, rather than up the ramp to kill Beaver.

A mechtoid to her back, Büge moves into the cargo bay.

Shit.

Out on the left side, Grath moves up through the elevator and plants himself beside the hole that mechtoid blast left behind.

Pretty delightful angle on our good buddy.

CRITICAL HIT

FOR

3.

Niku's nowhere near close enough for a punchin', so she sets herself at a diagnal, through the breach in the wall.

73% ain't bad.

Done and done.

One down, two to—

—SWEET JESUS

Berserker FLOATS UP AN ELEVATOR

BREAKING IN THE WALL WITH ITS SHOULDER

Beaver dies instantly.

Meanwhile.

Sectoid mindlinks with the mechtoid, boosting it by 6 hp.

Mectoid huffs it around the corner, to just beside Beat Bandito, who has finally stopped panicking.

This is bad.

Grath peeks around the corner.

Yep.

That's an alien.

He blasts it point blank for 5.

It beats its chest and runs at Grath.

Niku's ready for him.

On the opposite side of the bay, Büge is still trading plasma fire with the remaining muton.

It turns, taking a shot at Niku through the new hole the Berserker just opened up.

It's a miss.

The mechtoid jumps the elevator, running up to Büge.

It's looking real bad for our little French lass.

Grath moves to flank the remaining muton.

Nails the muton for 9, but it's one shy of a killshot.

Niku has an equally solid shot from where she's standing, but I decide not to chance it.

Nighty night.

Büge falls back to the outside. She could kill the sectoid from here, which would guarentee Niku and Grath wouldn't face another mindlink boost, but she'd most certainly die next turn.

She opts for the roof.

On her way up, she catches a slight glimpse of the second mechtoid, laying in wait outside.

Another time, good buddy. Another time.

Nobody follows.

Back inside, the mectoid jumps down from Büge's platform and into the middle of bay.

Takes a frustratingly perfect shot at Niku for 8, dropping her to half health.

I dunno if interrupting the thread is a good idea here,But on normal thanks to hidden potential and not created equal, I assualted most of my end-game missions with two psionics with wills in the ballpark of 180. So that was awesome.Going to try and be less lame and play Me Mode, but the question becomes... Do I play with training roulette? And if I do, should I get the mod that reveals the whole talent tree beforehand?

I seriously considered Training Roulette for this playthrough, but after losing like 6 times, decided I needed every advantage I could get.

I think it'd be really fun to try. Personally, I'd do it without knowing where the tech trees would end going. It's pretty random what abilities are going to be useful where in this game, and you can't really plan for a lot of it, so whatever. Having Close-Quarters Combat would've saved me just as many times as Rapid Reflexes did.

I remember you saying you savescrum a ton, which is how I did it on every campaign up until this one. Ironman's actually pretty fun once you learn to avoid certain encounters, making the game more about giving yourself as many advantages in that initial encounter as possible, and less about trying every possible route of action until you find the one that gets you out of the situation you barreled into.

The other thing is that getting wiped out isn't THAT big of a deal, especially later in the game. You can buy a new team within 3 days, and get them up to snuff within a month. If you can keep panic levels down, it doesn't really end up mattering in the end game.

I'm a little over halfway through the game on this campaign, and the only country I lost was Brazil, due to fucking up my first terror mission. I considered re-starting the game right then and there, but stuck with it, and here we are.

"Savescum" in this case means revert back to the last completed mission. Not quite what you might be thinking.Though, come to think of it, I did do some serious savescumming to get Durant's will to astronomical levels.

I feel like most of the trees have certain synergies built in that you're meant to exploit. Also: the support medic options.If you don't have the 3x uses or deep pockets (or something!) it's almost a waste to get the other medkit talents.

Two more aductions and a terror mission, all with minimal to no casualties. Ted got hit hard and was confined the to infirmary for about half a month. Niku took some heavy damage while charging at cyberdisk in the terror mission, and was stuck in shop while engineering fixed her up. Both were out in time for a couple of Exalt raids, however.

Which, at this point, are a complete joke. Exalt has upgraded to lasers and biotech, and they've gotten a lot more ambitious in their fund-siphoning intel hacks, but they can't seem to hit anything, and constantly waste a turn standing in place to reload. It's only a matter of time, honestly.'

Niku seems to be enjoying herself in the meantime.

At this point, I've narrowed down the location of the Exalt base to somewhere in Asia. My money's on Japan, but if I accuse a country of harboring the group and it turns out I'm wrong, that country pulls their funding. Not something I can chance at the moment.

I'm inclined to sit back and let the next few attacks come anyways, as an Exalt raid is such a turkey shoot that I can bring all rookies on those missions and level them up pretty easily.

I sell the latest cache of Exalt weaponry to the black market for a paltry 35 double dollars and speed ahead, waiting on my UFO tech research. I'm getting the point where more and more medium-to-heavy UFOs are popping up, and ravens are barely getting the job done. If I play my cards right, I could have the next generation interceptor researched an in development before the end of the

It's unfortunate that the difficulty level really collapses once you start wielding some advanced tech. That said, the new base defense mission was fun; it seems like it could form the basis of an endless survival mode.

On the other hand, Sectopods. They are impossible to kill on Ironman without at least two highly-leveled heavies, and god help you if your team wipes. Once sectopods enter the equation, every UFO downed and terror mission has one, meaning your only way to level rookies is to fight till you reach them, then run to the extraction zone and abort.

It's a total replacement of the main game that makes everything a billion times more intense, but less bullshit. You don't wipe because thin men have +35% accuracy on you at all times, you wipe because while you were following the last two retreating thin men you were ambushed by four chryssalids on the first UFO landing mission.

They actually boosted its defense by 50% in Enemy Within, making them impossible to hit and infuriating to damage. Without two high-level heavies, they're completely fucking impossible.

They were challenging even with my save/load powers.Although, funnily enough, mind control was still my solution much of the time, because they often spawn on maps with mechtoids/sectoids/whateverthefuck I was actually thinking of.